In general, I play at a low level until I need the AI to be better just so I have targets for what I want to use. If I want a large prosperous kingdom to conquer with my Keshiks, I'll probably set it to King. The only reason is so I can have nice targets. Same with Alexander. Playing Macedon is no fun if the enemy cities aren't nice and juicy.

I need to dial things back a bit. I've been up till past 2am three nights in a row with this.

There's something I'm missing with city development. In my latest game the other civs are catching up to me now. I'm still ahead in everything except religion, but several of the civs have cities larger than mine. I'm also only up by a few points over the Khmer, who got a massive continent all to themselves.

I'm not sure if I should be using more builders to develop the region around the city, or if there is a certain improvement I'm not taking advantage of.

Yeah, I should remember to build a holy site even when I'm not going for a religious victory. It would let me defend against other Civs' religion, and allow me to take advantage of those Golden Age benefits from faith if it makes sense.

Defending against the AIs religions seems pointless if you are not going for a religion win yourself. If the AI got a religion it seems to grossly over-commit to spreading it, even to cities it will not be able to convert anyway. Ending up with games where 2-3 religion units from each religious civ are constantly fighting over the same cities. Not much you can do against that without wasting resources unnecessarily.

jbavon wrote:

Shadout wrote:

Hah, managed to get 5 simultaneous alliances with Cree. Some of the alliance partners are still at war with each other :S
My tongue is hurting due to all the licking.

Alliances also mean defensive pacts. It will be interesting to see how many wars you get pushed into.

Yeah. It is really weird. I think the event trigger is only at the declaration of war, so existing wars does not matter (other than making everyone dislike me for being allied to someone they are at war with).
Would surely be nice if alliances made peace together when they also declare war together. It is a bit silly that I make peace, only for my alliance partners not to care. Could design it so you have to make a deal with both the enemy and your alliance partner, before a peace could be made.

I remember when the game first came out people mentioned how they kept getting surprised by losing due to another Civ getting a religious victory. Maybe that doesn't happen as often since they rebalanced religion, but it seems like something to keep in mind. Another example is that Indonesia gets extra faith from coastal cities, so even if you're not going for a religious victory with them, it would be nice to be able to put that faith towards something besides Great People. More options are always nice.

Sure, you have to keep an eye on it. But I think the way to stop a civ getting a religious victory would be to destroy that civ (or at least its religious cities), not try to keep up with their religious spread. Beat them in areas were they are weaker.
Besides, these days you can fight their religious units with your normal units, though I haven't played enough yet to know if that is enough to really stop a win. Have completely ignored religion in both my games so far, but I guess I'll get to a religious civ one of these days.

Agreeing if a Civ has religious bonuses you probably should focus somewhat on religion, even if that is not your victory goal. That is free faith going to waste otherwise.

Defending against the AIs religions seems pointless if you are not going for a religion win yourself. If the AI got a religion it seems to grossly over-commit to spreading it, even to cities it will not be able to convert anyway. Ending up with games where 2-3 religion units from each religious civ are constantly fighting over the same cities. Not much you can do against that without wasting resources unnecessarily.

This is the one core mechanic that I really don't like in Civ VI. Partly because I've never bothered to fully understand how to use it (at some point I got a religious win in vanilla, but that knowledge has evaporated), but it also just feels clumsy and cumbersome to me, dealing with the units and traipsing them all over the map to wave their magic sticks around. Even when ignoring it (as in my current game), it's irritating to watch the AI spam those units everywhere. The map has enough interactivity between districts and military units and builders and traders, etc. that I really wish they'd replace the religious mechanic with something that works more like spies. (Which may not be super intricate, but is unobtrusive on a turn-to-turn basis and doesn't further clutter an already full map.) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Agreed. Religion in Civ6 might be the weakest element in a civ game ever.
Not sure they even needed to replace the unit spam that much. Could have religious Great people for the big one-off effects, and then just have the natural pressure from city to city (with more ways to affect it).
I can understand if they wanted to depict religious wars better. Considering how much bloodshed there has been over religions. But moving the religious wars into a system on its own kinda seems to achieve the opposite. It is disconnected from the rest of the game at best, and annoying clutter at worst.
I think it would be better integrated if religious civs had some strong religious units that was fighting the actual wars. Or how about a combat unit that could convert enemy units into fighting for you.

I would be pretty happy with another expansion that only remade religion and added things to support a diplomacy victory.

I'm having a really fun game with Korea, Continents on Prince. Science victories are my favorite, so this civ is right up my alley. Plus the game started me near a bunch of juicy city starting areas near double mountain tiles. Hello, massive science bonus!

Spoiler:

Gravey: "Feels weird to do it with something other than a finger."
Employee Profile | GOTY 2018 | Chumpy: Pineapples

Speaking of bugs, I just ran into a game-ending bug. I've unlocked a few districts, but the game won't let me place ANY of them. As seen in this screenshot, I clicked Government Plaza, and the available locations are highlighted, but clicking on any of the tiles does nothing. Same with the other districts. First, I tried quitting and restarting Civ 6, but that didn't help. Then, I disabled the 3 mods that were still enabled from vanilla, but that didn't help. Lastly, I verified the Steam files, but that also didn't help.

So effectively, I just wasted the last 3 or 4 hours. I guess I'll eventually start a new game and hope that it doesn't happen again.

Steam: [GWJ]MeatMan | "Now I know where to go if I have a hankering for testicles." –Higgledy

Maybe its a feature. You are playing Netherlands. They really struggle with forming governments these days.

I does not help to reload a save from a few turns earlier?

Luckily haven't hit that particular bug yet, but had a somewhat similar one yesterday, where I changed government and went into anarchy. The game then wanted me to pick the next tech to research. Which was impossible, probably because of the anarchy. At least I could reload and pick new tech before I changed government.

Luckily haven't hit that particular bug yet, but had a somewhat similar one yesterday, where I changed government and went into anarchy. The game then wanted me to pick the next tech to research. Which was impossible, probably because of the anarchy. At least I could reload and pick new tech before I changed government.

I had that one as well. I was able to get around it by queuing up the tech from within the tree (as though you were going to sequence your next several picks). Scared me though when I couldn't end my turn!

Are you running any mods? The Internets say Production Queue will cause this from time to time.

MeatMan wrote:

Then, I disabled the 3 mods that were still enabled from vanilla, but that didn't help.

In some circumstances you need to manually delete the mods folder to get rid of some bugs. At least according to people on the bugs section at civfanatics.

Since making my previous post, I started a new game with the same civ and same game settings. No manual deletion of anything. In this new game, I am able to place districts, so my educated guess is that having vanilla mods still enabled when I created the first Rise and Fall game caused the bug.

So a piece of advice to R&F newcomers: disable all Steam Workshop mods before creating a new game, which can easily be done from the main menu of Civ 6.

Steam: [GWJ]MeatMan | "Now I know where to go if I have a hankering for testicles." –Higgledy

Wrapped up my run with Korea with a Science victory on King. Had a healthy tech lead the whole way and only a couple civs made it as far as putting up satellites. However, Pericles had every culture but mine dominated and was on his way to dominating mine as well. (It was bonkers how much culture output he had going.) In terms of expansions stuff, I had two golden ages and one dark age. The latter ended up being a huge problem as my one active shooting war started right as it kicked off and I got stuck trying to hold a couple captured cities while enduring diminished loyalty. One city in particular was on the edge of rebellions for a good 10-20 turns, but I managed to keep it in line with the Bread and Circus production. Never did see any emergencies, which struck me as odd, but hopefully just the way it went this time.

I really dig this expansion. There's a few new tech/unit combinations hidden in there in particular that I like, like the special ops upgrade from the ranger. As a whole, it's not game-changer, but it does add to it in some meaningful ways that I'd miss by going back to vanilla.

I still struggle at King level. I've been playing this game since before it was a computer game and I still haven't got past journeyman strategies. The problem from Prince to King appears to be you either have to bump your efficiency up by a level or get better at interfering with the plans of your opponents, neither of which I've got good at yet. I mostly just pootle away trying to win a development footrace on my own.

Never did see any emergencies, which struck me as odd, but hopefully just the way it went this time.

They seem to mostly happen in domination or religion games. Got two in my current game when converting enemy capitals who had heir own religions. A shame really, because they are an interesting mechanism, especially if the AI was better at trying to achieve the emergency goals. Even if you are ahead, you might be able to feel if most other civs suddenly allied against you.

King seems to be a level where things can go either way for me. I'm lousy about disrupting the AI, so I go for specialty and efficiency. I admit I pretty well stacked the deck by bee-lining science with Korea. They are an incredibly strong science civ, and for a long stretch, the only districts I built were science and commerce, the former of which is Korea's specialty and is both cheap and powerful. Once I was up a full age or more against the other AI and had a decent economy going, I only needed a paltry military to guard my borders (since they were all stronger). I pretty much ignored culture and faith until the mid to late game where I finally started building up some culture districts in a desperate attempt to blunt Greece's impact (which barely worked out).

The thing to me that stands out at King is that you can still maintain strong diplomatic ties at that level and those ties can be super beneficial in Rise and Fall (with the new alliance types and targeted use of trade routes/trade policies). I read the stories about the AI being war crazy, but I rarely find that to be the case. I had four civs on my continent and maintained alliances with two of them (both of which had shared borders) throughout almost the entire run, as well as with a third off-continent.

I did. I only did two spaceports, and each of those cities either had an industrial zone in it or benefited from one being in a neighboring city. Also, most of my cities were in hilly or wooded terrain, and my spaceport cities were crawling with mines and lumber yards. Also also, I managed to nab a couple of the Great People (scientist and engineer) that contribute to space production or space projects. Oh, and there's a governor with a promotion who speeds space production building a little bit.

Edit: This was also a Quick game. I don't know what a good turnaround for the Mars rocket components is on this setting, but each of the three took between 12-15 turns (IIRC).

I pretty much ignored culture and faith until the mid to late game where I finally started building up some culture districts in a desperate attempt to blunt Greece's impact (which barely worked out).

This has been a problem for me in a couple of my Civ VI games. It's tough to rush culture. I don't think there are any big culture bonuses for great people like there are science bonuses, and tourism is a slow burn. I try to have one specialized culture city, usually the one with high appeal tiles.

Gravey: "Feels weird to do it with something other than a finger."
Employee Profile | GOTY 2018 | Chumpy: Pineapples

For science victory there are some super strong great people (science and engineering) toward the end, which really boost the production. Likely worth it to skip previous great people in the line to get them, or have the gold to buy them.

Finished my playthrough with Georgia just now. With a religious victory in 1840. Playing on king, as I do most games, and had a fairly weak start. Couldn't get ahead in tech, despite focusing on it, Korea was tough. And got dominated in culture by everyone. Was even behind in faith production.
Still, victory was never much in doubt. Early in, 2 civs tried to kill me, but the AI yet again failed on taking cities, and I just barely managed to get a few units out before I lost. After that nobody really tried anything. No space race, no tourism, not much war other than me taking revenge on one of the early aggressors. A bit of a weird game.

Georgias achievement was to convert all city states to their religion. Quite bugged, since I got it after converting a single city state.
At least I got my first Heroic age in this game. Really struggled with the era points most of the game though. Despite Georgia being the Era boosting civilization.

Edit: Next game up; Scotland. Seems to be a science/production civ, so space race it is.
And bagpipes theme! I think I am in love with this civ.

I appreciate that there is a real time clock display in the top right corner of the interface, so that I don't lose track of time and stay up too late. Now I can keep great track of time while I stay up too late.

Despite telling myself that I was going to catch up on some sleep last night, I fired up the game "for a couple of turns." Two and a half hours later I was off to bed at 1:30am, which is actually the earliest I've gotten to bed since I've started playing. Progress in self discipline!

I spent more time in my second game, with America. I'm up to around 1930 now, and I've pulled away considerably from the rest of the world. I was losing ground for a while there, but I spent some time last night learning how to use great people and works of art better, and wow, did that help. Thanks to museums and art, my culture/tourism score shot through the roof. And with scientists and a focus on campuses, our tech lead is huge now. I'm well on the path to either a culture or a space race win, not sure which will come first.

The only risk to losing would seem to be on the religious front, but I've put enough effort into faith that I've held Montezuma's Catholicism at bay. I've even chipped away at their religious empire by parking a few acolytes in their path of expansion, and picking their acolytes off one by one when they come marching by.

This difficulty level (Warlord) seems very passive, as I'd expect. I haven't been at war since the very first few turns, and on one seems inclined to take me on now, even a perpetually disgruntled Montezuma.

I'm looking forward to wrapping this up and starting my third game. I'd like to move back up to Prince difficulty. Warlord was a good learning experience but I need more danger.

Just got an emergency for liberating a city state that was conquered. Considering how ridiculously aggressive the AI is toward city states in the expansion, I wish that would trigger much more often. In my previous game just about half of the city states survived beyond the early game. 2 are gone so far in my new game.